Broadcast "journalists" on the defensive
So, it seems that the big network TV news anchors are taking umbrage with "Fahrenheit 9/11," or at least with any criticism of the TV media that may result from the film.
The problem is, they all seem to think that they're paragons of journalistic integrity and objectivity. Take ABC's Ted Koppel:
"'Nightline' is not nearly as entertaining as 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' " Koppel said. "We're never going to be as entertaining as '9/11.' We're never going to be as entertaining as the movie 'JFK.' But there is still, I think, a desperate need for down-the-middle news."
Agreed. And the problem is, the major media -- especially television -- don't make a serious attempt to play it down the middle. They just regurgitate official pronouncements and the like.
But they -- or at least NBC's Tom Brokaw -- don't quite see it that way.
"It's really easy to turn back the clock now and say, 'Oh, it was the fault [of the media], especially of the electronic media, that we went to war because they jumped on the bandwagon,' " Brokaw said. "If you do a fair review, we gave a very vigorous accounting of what was known and what was not known at the time. ... The American news networks and the newspapers, for the most part, did as well as they could under the circumstances."
Well, maybe. If you consider the aforementioned repetitions of bland administration propaganda to be a "very vigorous accounting." Sure, Brokaw went to Iraq before the war. He wasn't the only celebrity "journalist" to do it. Dan Rather interview Saddam pre-invasion. But they didn't exactly go about trying to do much objective, or even nominally original reporting. It was more background that fit the "Saddam-is-evil" mantra to set the impending invasion against.
Anything to the contrary ... well, those are just inconvenient facts we can sweep under the rug.
"I had a lot of people come up to me and, quietly, at some risk, say: 'When are the Americans coming? We can't continue to live like this,' " Brokaw said. "And the only scenes we saw in Michael Moore's film ... were children sliding down playground ramps and so on.
"That was not an accurate portrayal. This was one of the most repressive regimes in history. Was it an appropriate excuse to go to war? That's a whole other debate. ... [But] the idea of using Michael Moore's very artful, very strong point of view as some kind of gold standard, I think, is just wholly inappropriate. I really do."
Look, I don't think anyone claims that Michael Moore is the standard bearer for journalism. Although if some folks are holding him up as such, I think that speaks volumes to the pathetic, inadequate, piss-poor job the mainstream media have been doing. If you keep telling folks that all is peachy keen when clearly it's not, they're going to drool over someone who at least tries to point out that things are pretty rotten. Even if it's over the top.
And the whole montage of children playing? It's ridiculous that this is something people are finding so much fault with. Moore wasn't trying to portray life in Saddam's Iraq as some kind of idyll. But it wasn't all torture chambers and suffering either. It's pretty damn difficult to impose total, incessant, 24/7 misery on an entire society. But you wouldn't know that from watching network news coverage. Some things are universal. Americans die. Iraqis die. Americans suffer under their government. Iraqis suffer under their government. And despite it all, American children still fly kites. So do Iraqi kids. It's an essential dimension of Iraqi life, another side to the story. And in the context of TV news saturation and hype, you don't need to present the same side that's been rammed down everyone's throats since we decided we hated Iraq more than a dozen years ago. It's implicit, stupid.
The problem is, they all seem to think that they're paragons of journalistic integrity and objectivity. Take ABC's Ted Koppel:
"'Nightline' is not nearly as entertaining as 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' " Koppel said. "We're never going to be as entertaining as '9/11.' We're never going to be as entertaining as the movie 'JFK.' But there is still, I think, a desperate need for down-the-middle news."
Agreed. And the problem is, the major media -- especially television -- don't make a serious attempt to play it down the middle. They just regurgitate official pronouncements and the like.
But they -- or at least NBC's Tom Brokaw -- don't quite see it that way.
"It's really easy to turn back the clock now and say, 'Oh, it was the fault [of the media], especially of the electronic media, that we went to war because they jumped on the bandwagon,' " Brokaw said. "If you do a fair review, we gave a very vigorous accounting of what was known and what was not known at the time. ... The American news networks and the newspapers, for the most part, did as well as they could under the circumstances."
Well, maybe. If you consider the aforementioned repetitions of bland administration propaganda to be a "very vigorous accounting." Sure, Brokaw went to Iraq before the war. He wasn't the only celebrity "journalist" to do it. Dan Rather interview Saddam pre-invasion. But they didn't exactly go about trying to do much objective, or even nominally original reporting. It was more background that fit the "Saddam-is-evil" mantra to set the impending invasion against.
Anything to the contrary ... well, those are just inconvenient facts we can sweep under the rug.
"I had a lot of people come up to me and, quietly, at some risk, say: 'When are the Americans coming? We can't continue to live like this,' " Brokaw said. "And the only scenes we saw in Michael Moore's film ... were children sliding down playground ramps and so on.
"That was not an accurate portrayal. This was one of the most repressive regimes in history. Was it an appropriate excuse to go to war? That's a whole other debate. ... [But] the idea of using Michael Moore's very artful, very strong point of view as some kind of gold standard, I think, is just wholly inappropriate. I really do."
Look, I don't think anyone claims that Michael Moore is the standard bearer for journalism. Although if some folks are holding him up as such, I think that speaks volumes to the pathetic, inadequate, piss-poor job the mainstream media have been doing. If you keep telling folks that all is peachy keen when clearly it's not, they're going to drool over someone who at least tries to point out that things are pretty rotten. Even if it's over the top.
And the whole montage of children playing? It's ridiculous that this is something people are finding so much fault with. Moore wasn't trying to portray life in Saddam's Iraq as some kind of idyll. But it wasn't all torture chambers and suffering either. It's pretty damn difficult to impose total, incessant, 24/7 misery on an entire society. But you wouldn't know that from watching network news coverage. Some things are universal. Americans die. Iraqis die. Americans suffer under their government. Iraqis suffer under their government. And despite it all, American children still fly kites. So do Iraqi kids. It's an essential dimension of Iraqi life, another side to the story. And in the context of TV news saturation and hype, you don't need to present the same side that's been rammed down everyone's throats since we decided we hated Iraq more than a dozen years ago. It's implicit, stupid.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 21:13
1 Comments:
I think in large part you have to blame the medium here. TV is in so many ways the worst way to convey news. It's popular because it requires no mental effort to ingest, generally, and it feels immediate oftentimes because of "live" broadcasts of "breaking news." (Aside: "Breaking" news? What does that mean, anyway? I despise journalism lingo.) But being immediate and in the moment means necessarily having to disgard distance and thus any hope of objectivity. Plus, since, on TV, news must be conveyed in short sound bites, you can't have much depth. You could argue that it's not required that TV journalists limit their stories to 60 seconds or less of airtime, but the problem this brings is that TV is a visual medium, too. For example, the local news recently ran a story on disposing hazardous waste, like paint, safely. You're supposed to mix the paint with either kitty litter or some sort of chemical hardener before trashing it. For some reason, the visuals on this whole piece consisted of a shot of the reporter in the news room, then about 45 seconds of various shots of kitty litter packages on store shelves. For long after she stopped talking about kitty litter -- and paint. She had some useful information to convey in the piece, but what the heck? Why all the kitty litter? While clearly, someone should have gotten some different footage in this case, it demonstrates the point that sometimes, there's nothing much to show. Were you to devote a newscast to reading a newspaper-style story, you would likely find it interminable and boring. It's harder to comprehend by listening than by reading.
Anyway, back to the other point. These TV people probably do feel with some justification that they're doing a decent job. It's just that it's impossible to produce something really good and balanced in such a format. There's so much you don't know, especially when the reporting is live. That's why we have historians, of course -- to sort out what really happened long after the fact. If TV journalists could product the kind of valuable insight and balanced outlook provided by most historians -- dearest, you'd be out of a job.
Okomentovat
<< Home